


The Colour Red

by sp8ce



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Dissociation, F/F, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Morality, Poetic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-23
Updated: 2019-05-23
Packaged: 2020-03-10 01:49:17
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,821
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18928849
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sp8ce/pseuds/sp8ce
Summary: You don’t think you could live in a world without the colour red.





	The Colour Red

You don’t think you could live in a world without the colour red.

The sky is always grey or white, the ground the same, a concrete world with ephemeral coats of slushy white snow. You speak in monochrome, your only allowance blue because you’re always cold, always drowning, and everyone dresses like the dark weather is their only muse.

But it wouldn’t matter, entirely, you think. You imagine a warm place, with sun beaming down on you (oh God, will you ever not feel _so cold_?). You imagine golden sand and green trees in the distance and the blue sky, light, not like your lipstick matching your frozen lips or the colours of your jeans, and a sea like the Mediterranean. But maybe it wouldn’t matter, drowning in the dark weather or drowning in an aqua sea, you’ll always just want the colour red.

It demands attention, fiery yet sweet with the concept of _love_ . Bright against the monochrome background. Spiralling around your mind like the perfect highlight, the perfect contrast, the perfect _everything you ever wanted_. How could you survive in a world without the colour red?

But she doesn’t like you very much.

She gave you those red shoes, not the ones you're wearing, she gave you a pair of red converse when you were still kids that you grew out of. It’s the definition of your fashion now, your guilty pleasure. You only wear red shoes. Greys, blues, and blacks are who you are, sharp coldness and cruelty, but you allow your vibrant shoes because she was the one who originally gave them to you. She allowed you the colour red. Now when you trip and fall, it’s clear to see every misstep.

But she doesn’t like you very much.

You think you’re almost friends if you were allowed friends. She doesn’t grace your animosity like Kanaya and she’s never on your team like Terezi. But isn’t she something close? She kind of hates you, and you accept that if it means her attention. You bully her friend relentlessly (can’t he see that you’re just trying to help him? Can he see that you just want to make him _strong?_ ), and she loves like red too, vibrant.

While he’s everything you hate about yourself and you hate him for it, she is everything you wish you could be, but aren’t. You want every part of her. You want her balance and her attention. You want to spiral into her. You want to be her monochrome and blue world that makes her dark red speak in volumes. You want her to want you, god why can’t she want you? You think about her lips: they’re red.

You look at her like she’s another universe. She’s got all the weaknesses you’re supposed to loathe, and you want to hate her for it, but instead she’s somehow everything you could ever wish for. She’s _kind_ , and red is anger, but she is _sweet_ , she’s just passion and loyalty. You think she’d seriously hurt you if you hurt her friends, and sometimes you wonder if she’s thought about ways to hurt you. Maybe that should make you hurt him less, but instead it just makes you want to aggravate him until she breaks and punches you in the face. You wonder what it’d be like, for her to beat your body senseless.

Red is the strength you always look for, that you’re trying to emulate. You want to bathe yourself in blood. You want to dye your hair and paint your lips and never wear black, grey, or blue again. But you can’t. Because you wouldn’t _be_ red then. You’re too harsh for the harshness of red. You’d be a disgrace to it. Red on you is a warning sign. You don’t want to masacre the concept of her because she can be red because she is passion and she is sweet. You’re harsh and cruel and cold ( _it’s so cold, it’s so cold_ ) and _empty_. So your only guilty pleasure are these shoes.

Why does the only strength have to come from suffering? Why does the only strength have to come from making others suffer? Why does the only way you’ll ever be capable of helping others have to come from the concept of strength?

She’s your weakness. He never could be because you hurt him, but you don’t want to hurt her. She’ll ruin you. You just want to help everyone. You want to be vibrant enough to make the world warm, but you’re lost in school days of white and thin jackets with holes and waiting outside till night to avoid the chance of home. You have to _burn_. But how can you burn when you’re enamoured by her? She’s sweetness. And that’s exactly why you’ll never be able to be a good person. Because she’s the definition of weakness and she’s your weakness so she’s not helping you and you just want to help others.

But you can’t stop! You can’t stop wanting her! You can’t be strong! You can’t do anything but _break break break break break break break break_!

You’re out of your mind. You’re always so frantic, you’re always so fucking _dramatic_ . You want to message someone, but your hands won’t make it work, you’d be a jumbled nonsense like you always get when your emotions get the better of you (oh so you’re not _fire_ , oh so you’re not _strength_ , oh so you’re _guarded, guarded_ , a wealth of sensitive emotions constantly at the surface of your weaponised pain). You don’t know what to do. You don’t know where to go. It’s not safe here, it’s never ever safe here. The lights don’t seem real, your bed doesn’t seem real, you don’t think you’re real. Maybe you’ve ascended. Is this what ascension looks like?

You stumble outside into the night, and maybe you’ll disappear forever this time. Maybe you’ll melt into the dark night. You run fast, and nothing’s real. The street lights aren’t real, the sky isn’t real, the concrete beneath your feet isn’t real. How could ethereality be so scary? You find yourself in the middle of the road, and you scream scream _scream_ at the sky. ( _Oh, god, maybe you genuinely_ **_want_ ** _to break_ ).

You’d disappear forever because you don’t know who you are or how you got here. You don’t know what anything means or your own name or anything besides the constant coldness the constant cruelty the constant concept of blue and monochrome.

But you ran here, didn’t you? You ran here, and your feet were vibrant, the colour red.

You want the other universe. You wish it existed. You wished you were _worthy_ of the colour red. You’re a heathen. This is blasphemy. But even worse? It means you’re a bad person. You want to help people. This isn’t how you help people. Kindness is _weakness_. Like remorse is the ultimate evil, and the ultimate way she tortures you is playing on your sense of remorse.

But you _beg her_ . You message her _please_ . You’re lost, so lost, and the colour red is the only colour of your own missteps. You throw your phone onto the ground despite its necessity and collapse in the centre of the road, and you _sob_.

You lose yourself in street like you lose yourself in ice and cold freezing water in which you drown and everything becomes black. How much time passes? Are you just a spider that’s going to be squished?

“Vriska?” she says, and you look up and your focus shifts. You see her, wearing a red long sleeved shirt and a long black skirt. She looks so concerned, waiting away from you on the white mark in between the road that meets the one you’re on at a less than 30 degree angle. You’re in the turn lane, and god you want to merge.

“What you are you doing here?” you demand. _Can’t she take down your defenses? Can’t she just destroy everything that you are? Can’t she ruin everything you’ll ever want to be, ruin your strength, ruin the only goodness you know and replace it with whatever she is because you l o v e her?_

“You told me to come,” she says, but she doesn’t sound angry or confused, just matter-a-fact. Like it was normal to come out at 2am to a sobbing broken wreck of a bully on the ground who hisses at you when you try to speak to her. _She’s everything s h e ‘ s  e v e r y t h i n g._

“I don’t need you, I don’t need you, I don’t _need you_ ,” you scream in a crescendo, standing up and pounding your fists into your own legs. ( _God you’re so weak, so pathetic, so deserving of so much pain, look at you, having a fucking temper-tantrum_ ).

“It’s okay...” she starts, and you’re so scared she’s going to tell you it’s okay to _need_ someone that you literally _hiss_ at her.

“No it’s _not_!”

“Maybe we could get out of the road? Vriska, I don’t want you to get hurt,” she says, and why doesn’t she? Why can’t she be the foot that squishes you, the pathetic spider you are. After all, didn’t she give you those shoes?

“If someone’s driving this late at night they have bigger problems than caring if they hit someone like _me_ ,” you say. She shakes her head, but doesn’t push you, and she looks like an alien in the street lights.

“I don’t think she’s completely true,” she says quietly.

“ _Who even_ are _you_?” you demand. You’re shaking, though, because it’s so cold, and you still don’t know what’s going on. She’s got a jacket around her waist instead of on her arms, and you don’t know how she can be okay with that in the freezing cold.

“I’m Aradia!” she says, and she says it brightly, like she can be positive even in the face of your wreckage.

“Then who the fuck am _I_ ,” you say, as if the answer wasn’t acerbic.

“Vriska Serket,” she says. And she smiles.

“But who am to _you,_ ” you ask. “Am I even fucking _real_ ? Do you hate me? Could you hate me enough for it to mean something? Can’t I be fucking _anything_ to you?” You sob again, and you want rip apart your entire body. Have you spun your web enough to suffocate everyone around you? Can’t you be the fly? Can’t you choke and be eaten and just fucking _die_?

“Can I touch you Vriska?” she asks, coming closer, and you don’t know why she’s _asking_ because you’d beg for any contact from her always, but you nod silently, and she closes the difference between the two of you, and she wraps her arms around you in a hug. And you melt. Her red melts away everything else.

“I... I can’t do it, I can’t do it,” you drabble into her shoulder. “I can’t do it.”

“Can’t do what?” she says softly, and you don’t know why she’s being so _nice_ to you. Is there anyone else in the world like her? No, because if they were they wouldn’t be her.

“I just can’t do it anymore. I was never strong enough,” you admit, and you can’t believe you’re saying these words out loud. Maybe some part of you can recognise her contrasting philosophy. Maybe that’s why she’s the reason you’re finally able to break. Because to her, breaking doesn’t mean you’re a bad person. You just are a bad person.

“For what?”

“I don’t know. I can’t keep track of what’s going on. I just want to scream and scream and _scream_ and hurt myself until that becomes strength all I want it the strength, but it’s all a fucking lie because I wasn’t never strong,” you say, and you can’t believe the words coming out of your mouth, but her arms are still around you, and you feel warm. She feels you shiver, and she takes off the jacket around her waist and drapes it over you, and you slip your arms inside, before dropping the ground, and she sits beside you.

“I think you’re very strong,” she says. “But why do you have to be strong?”

“Because it’s the only way to be good,” you say. “I want to be the best. I want to help everyone around me and help them be the best. I’m not a good person, I know you don’t think so, but I want to help everyone, so I have to be the best.”

“Maybe there are other ways to go around helping others?” she says, and her voice is _sweet_ , and she’s being _kind_ to you, yet somehow it’s _helping_.

“But strength is the ultimate good, and how else to help others then help them find strength? And if I go to far and I feel remorse, then how is that not weakness, making me incapable of helping other and being the opposite of good?” you say. She looks at you like you’re a puzzle, like you’re speaking some nonsense, like your words are illogical. She’s silent for a minute.

“Maybe the ultimate strength can just be that care you have for helping others? In what their own defined sense of goodness is, not yours? How good we are is not defined by how much pain we can take,” she says, and it’s too much, it’s all too much.

“But then what’s the _point_ of it?” you say, and you’re getting agitated again. “What’s the point of the pain? How am I ever supposed to take more and more of it if it doesn’t make me stronger to help others?”

“What’s hurting you so badly, Vriska?” she asks, and god, now she sounds like Kanaya, all concerning and motherly, like you deserve a mother and not someone who hurts you every day.

“Does it matter? This world is shit,” you say. “But people aren’t.” you add as an afterthought.

“For what it’s worth,” she says, taking your hand. “I think maybe you really are a good person, but you have hurt others and yourself, and maybe all the hurting just needs to stop?”

“There’s no way to escape,” you say. “The world is so cruel, she even _says_ so, that’s the whole point of it all, to prepare me,” you say.

“Who? Your mother?” she asks, and you _cringe_. “How about this? You know your friends? All of us, we’re going to make it so you never have to see her again. And you can be a good person without having to hurt or having to hurt others,” she says, like it’s the simplest thing in the world.

“It’s not that simple,” you say. “There won’t be an escape.”

“We’re not even eighteen yet,” she says. “You still have so many ways to escape and heal.”

“I don’t want to hurt others, it’s not about hurting them, you get that right? It’s about making them stronger. It’s about saving them.”

“I think you’re just wrong about that, okay? Agree to disagree? Maybe it’s okay to be your definition of weak,” she says. She’s filling your whole head in with red, and you don’t think you’re able to take the collision of universes. What sort of paradox will emerge? Will you get spun out of the milky way, or out of the solar system? Will you get thrown out of the sun’s orbit and freeze or will you come closer and burn? Can you take it?

“You’ve always been the most beautiful thing I have ever seen,” you admit quitely, and you’re always one for cliche drama. But she’s holding your hand, and now she looks hesitant and _oh fuck_ , you’re scared she’s going to let you go, but she doesn’t.

“You asked what you were to me,” she says after a second, after your confession. “You’re a dear friend who I’ve never truly understand,” she says. “Who I just wished would stop being cruel,” and it hurts to hear. “And who I want to know so much better.”’ She is looking to the ground, and maybe she’s blushing, but you her gaze it at your red shoes. She knows your missteps then, doesn’t she? She knows every way you have ever gotten lost because she allowed you the only thing in the world you knew how to comprehend as anything but the horrible web you’ve spent your entire life spun in.

“You know,” you say. And she looks and you, and she is still holding your hand, and even though you’re in the middle of the road in the middle of the night and you know you’re going to have to go back home despite what she said, you feel so calm. “You know, Aradia? I really really love the colour red.”

You rest your head on her shoulder, and smell her red red hair.

**Author's Note:**

> when ur roommate wants to watch danganronpa v3 with you but you gotta finish writing your aravris fanficion in 2k19
> 
> hi im obsessed with red aravris how are you
> 
> please leave any feedback or comments! I hope you enjoyed Vriska's colour drabbles!


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